Forgotten Friday #88 - 水歌ナツ / Mizuka Natsu

Let me start by saying that AXFC is a freaking jerk. I use adblock, and the site doesn't limit me because of it. Which is great, because it had the worst ads to show up on a family computer years ago. Ya know, when there stopped being random popups of real people, but the anime characters made it even worse? No idea if that's gotten better. No, the reason it's a jerk is because you can try to download a file ten times, and then come back an hour later and it downloads the first time. And it's not that it's an old server or anything. They just recently added "ape" and "pepper". So, if anyone can explain why the files just randomly go to different servers that don't want to work... Like, it's a problem.

Forgotten Friday #88 - 水歌ナツ / Mizuka Natsu

Natsu has her own distribution page! Hurrah! And she has a biography that states more than her outfit!

Who is Natsu Mizuka?

Official Art from Bank

Wiki Wednesday #77 - 碓氷ホノカ / Usui Honoka

1/5. So, everything will be different by the time this is published. I will feel differently and I likely will act differently. I wrote "humorhorse" as an intentional misspelling of "humorous" and laughed for like a minute straight. I have to rewrite every word. That doesn't really sound like depression, I guess, laughing at stupid jokes, but it's kinda just what it is for me. My brain is bye-bye. I don't know how well I'll do at this, but it's making me happy somehow.

Wiki Wednesday #77 - 碓氷ホノカ / Usui Honoka

I saw I had put a collective in my spreadsheet with a note that I hadn't downloaded from it. The first four banks were simple. One or two banks, nothing major. Then the last two? There was about six gigabytes of zipped UTAUs there. That's a lot of voicebank! I had just downloaded eight gigabytes. So it's all "aaaaa". Thankfully, my satellite internet does not have any restrictions at certain time periods. When I'm the only fella in my area up, then it's nyoom nyoom fast. I remember it was really bad before, and very slow. But, since they've put a new satellite in space, it's really nice. It's not nice when I run out of data, but it's okay. It's dial up speeds and I lived with those for forever anyway.

I do like writing and expressing myself even if I'm not feeling well. It isn't fully fair to the UTAU to just talk about myself and say "oh btw, this exists!" But, I'll just stick with Japanese UTAUs that you literally would have never heard of on your own. (hehe... humorhorse...)

Who is Honoka Usui? 

Official Icon Packaged with Bank

Forgotten Friday #87 - 霧音コカ / Kirine Koka

I won't make jokes about the name in the body of the article. But I have to make one small one. Did they know what the given name means? Is it meant to be Coca? The password (whoops, I'm sharing passwords because it's relevant) is koka, but like... That could be to hide the subversive nature. I don't think there's much information on this UTAU at all, so I have no idea. 

Forgotten Friday #87 - 霧音コカ / Kirine Koka

So! I love acquiring things. I'd rather have money in the bank than objects in my room, so I don't really shop... at all. So, if I can't spend money, how can I acquire things? I download UTAU banks.

I really do have an issue. I just really feel happy when I do it. However, my computer has limited space on it. So, I tell myself, you can't download anything more until you delete the banks you have. Well, how do I do that?! By writing an article on them. Bank goes bye-bye and I've been productive.

Now, that's all great, and I'm going to do my best to start where I stopped and go on up as far as I can. The issue is that well... The articles are going to be a bit... This is kind of weird to explain. 2010 kind of feels more like 2009 than 2010 when you're running through the list and finding how many banks are just gone. Almost every overseas UTAU from the last few months I've looked through has just been gone into the aether. Most of the Japanese UTAUs seem to be linked to on a nicovideo and that's it. No page, no Wiki, nothing other than a link on a NicoVideo.

I can completely understand that 2009 people were exploring a new world and kind of wanted to stick around because they had roots. 2010 people weren't the first to the party, and felt safe saying "deuces" and skipping out. Or, 4Shared and MediaFire had a massive purge. That one doesn't strike me as correct because all of my stuff on there is still there. (As a note, I had no idea how often my UTAU had been downloaded from MediaFire. Some of her VCV banks had been downloaded over five hundred times?!)

So, Forgotten Friday episodes will be a mess for a bit. They'll all have a picture, a sample, and a link... But will I talk about Hostess Snack Cakes? Will I talk about the weather? Who knows! I just know that I want to download more banks and need to work through the ones I have first. 

Who is Koka Kirine?

Image from video on Nicovideo

Wiki Wednesday #76 - 想音リイ / Lee Omoine

5/5! Day one of my silly experiment, and I reached the goal! I think originally, making a tie wasn't winning... But, ya know, I think doing a tie is the proper intention as opposed to always winning. Balance... or... something. No telling when I wake up tonight, so maybe I will change my tune and do more tonight. Maybe not! Who even knows.

Wiki Wednesday #76 - 想音リイ / Lee Omoine

So, this entire character can be summed up from one line in the readme:

名前の由来：想→そう→うそ→嘘/緑（ミク）→りゅいそぉ（中国語）→リイ

The heading is "origin of name". And the wordplay does not translate to English in the slightest. Okay, so.. Actually, I have no idea if it even holds up in Japanese. So, her surname is "Concept Sound". The kanji is read as "sou". What is "sou" backwards when accounting for the mora structure of Japanese? "Uso". What is Uso? A lie. What is a green lie? Miku. (No, neither uso nor midori have a reading that smushes together to become Miku.) Uso-Midori has on'yomi of... no, they don't. The reading of "lie" in Chinese is "xu". The reading of "green" is "lu". But anyway, the green lie Miku somehow has something to do with the phrase "ryuisou", which is where her given name comes from.

I... Don't... know? I sent a Tweet to the manager about it.

Who is Lee Omoine?

Official Art Packaged with Bank

Forgotten Friday #86 - 汀メジロ / Migiwa Mejiro

Gosh dang it. I checked my phone right quick and was scrolling through reddit. There was a heartbreaking comic on "make me cry". I said "I'm a big girl! I can handle it!" Nope. My eyes hurt from doing that Hollywood cry where you're just making a normal face and the tears showed up anyway. It moves around the oils just enough to make your eyes sting like heck for a few minutes. Same thing with the short movie "Hair Love". I said, "This doesn't apply to me! I won't cry!" I did. I cried a lot. I ugly cried for that one.

Forgotten Friday #86 - 汀メジロ / Migiwa Mejiro

So, I tend to not listen to samples before doing this. I like being surprised. Mejiro's art is really androgynous in the way that a lot of art from specific styles is. When you learn how to place features, but don't really learn how to differentiate between male and female features, you end up with everyone looking androgynous unless you lean hard into one gender more than the other, and then everyone looks that one gender instead of the other and it's a whole thing.

Mejiro is a dude! I'm sure Mejiro is a very masculine name in Japan, but I don't know Japan, man. I know very little about Japan.

Who is Mejiro Migiwa?

Taken from UTAU Visual Archive

Wiki Wednesday #75 - 三ヶ猫の空♂ / mikeneko_tom's Kuu

4/5. The icon for this bank is named Kuu. But, to confirm it was Kuu, I had to track down the UTAU Visual Archive page... It was amazing it even existed. Please don't name your UTAUs like this. This UTAU might secretly have ten videos with a hundred thousand views or some nonsense because there's no actual way to... you know... search this name and get results. Also, what are ya trying to do to the poor Westerners who see Sora and think Sora! I have no idea how I found this UTAU, to be honest. The link just kind of... was in my spreadsheet with no reference to the UTAU Wiki. 

Wiki Wednesday #75 - 三ヶ猫の空♂ / mikeneko_tom's Kuu

In the words of Avril Lavigne, "Why you gotta go make things so complicated?" This UTAU's name uses the on'yomi of the kanji for sky. Which all the weeaboos know is read as sora. Sky = sora is the kind of thing you pick up just from watching subbed anime intros! Besides that, kanji hanging out all by themselves tend to have the kun'yomi reading. 車輪, or vehicle wheel, uses the on'yomis of "sha" and "rin". Separately, as "car" and "ring", they used the kun'yomi of "kuruma" and "wa". (Fun note. Body parts tend to just make things kun'yomi for no... real reason? Finger-ring, 指輪, is "yubiwa".)

So, this fella done did a variety of things. They named their UTAU something that can't be Googled and is shared with a Chinese UTAU. Then, they gave the UTAU a reading that you wouldn't expect. It's completely valid, but you wouldn't expect it. And then! The only way to find out the reading is to just assume that the icon name is the UTAU name! If it weren't for Visual Archive, the only way to find the reading would be to download the bank and find the icon image. That's... a lot! 

Why? 

Who is Kuu?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank

Forgotten Friday #85 - 唄美キョコ / Kyoko Utami

Every time I mildly touch drama in the fandom, I just shut down and ask myself, "Why am I here if people don't seem to like me being here?" But then I sit down and I convert a VCV bank to CVVC and a CV bank to pseudo-CVVC and I'm like.. oh. that's why. I legitimately enjoy the technical aspects of the software. I look at the numbers for the blog, and I can see that people are reading it. I think I should be more of a "grey wall" to keep drama from affecting the blog beyond my own self-doubt. I'll think harder about writing anything remotely controversial from now.

Forgotten Friday #85 - 唄美キョコ / Kyoko Utami

It's not really a big deal what I did... But I am proud of myself! The UTAU Fandom page for Kyoko only had her Act 1, so I just looked on YouTube and found her Act 2 almost immediately. I added the link for the distribution video as opposed to the direct Mediafire link due to my experience with the MMD sphere. (Direct linking has turned passwords into scavenger hunts.)

Completely regardless of how good or bad Kyoko is (I haven't checked), her voice provider, Mikau was serious business. (Note, the readme says Mikau is the voice provider, but the UTAU Fandom page says it is Immy. The kanji is different also, so... Who knows!) Mikau literally bought a URL for her UTAU blog. Even if it's not expensive, money changed hands for an online presence! Only one page of it was archived, and there's a review of wig stores. That's cool!

So, I'm pumped to see how it turned out. One of the videos for Kyoko mentioned that she was recorded in a studio settings. The intros for the songs were so long on the videos checked, I clicked off before the voice started singing. Don't want to ruin the surprise!

Who is Utami Kyoko?

Official Icon from Bank

Wiki Wednesday #74 - 三音二 / Ni Sanne

3/5. I promised myself I wouldn't download any more UTAUs until I had seriously take a dent out of the ones I had... But I contacted the voice provider of this UTAU over Twitter about the downloads. The CVVC link was replaced with the CV link. They fixed it up right quick! So I thought, I gotta be respectful and use that knowledge now that I got it! I'm bad at stopping myself from downloading things.

Wiki Wednesday #74 - 三音二 / Ni Sanne

So, I don't very much have much to say. This UTAU has a pretty complete biography, so I won't just have to go on a tangent on the meaning of the lack of shoes.

So! Article!

Who is Sanne Ni?

Official Icon Packaged with Bank